YES! The author of I'd Kiss You but then I'd Have to Kill You series is back, with a vengeance (ha! punny!) with a middle grade series this time. I do wish this had been out when my daughter was younger and read the YA series (she didn't care for all the kissing!).
This has none of that, thankfully.
April is left at an orphanage with a key on a necklace and she's convinced her mother's coming back for her (she's not). On a field trip to a local museum, she sees a box in a collection of artifacts from the Winterborne Family, of which the last descendant, Gabriel, went missing years ago. The box has the same crest as her key.
Driven to figure out if the box has any clues to her mother's identity, she sneaks into the museum to try the lock and ... starts a fire, which takes the whole place down.
But after she's rescued from smoke inhalation, she's rescued again -- from the orphanage -- by the lady in white, Isabella Nelson, who works for the Winterborne charity. April's asked if she'd like to live and go to school in the Winterborne mansion. Uh, yeah!?
On the way they pick up Tim and Violet, and once on the grounds she encounters Smithers, the amazing butler, and Sadie, a budding inventor whose parents worked for the Winterbornes as scientists and were killed, and Colin, son of a con artist, one of hundreds over the years who've tried to prove she was Gabriel Winterborne's fiance. They've all been touched by the Winterbornes -- in some way.
Enter Everet Winterborne, a distant cousin of the missing Gabriel, and next-in-line to inherit the family's fortune. And mansion. If Gabriel can't be found.
Until April wakes up one night, and something she suspects is The Sentinel, a Batman-esque urban legend, knocks over a vase and tells her he's...
Ha! I won't spoil it. Ally Carter's writing is a joy to read, and her plotting is both thorough and delightful. Read on for yourself to figure out what happens, if Gabriel Winterborne is ever "found" and if the kids get to stay in the mansion or must they go back to their vagabond, orphan lives.
Enjoy!
